The End of Chandra Bose—Japanese Puppet

rE death of Chandra Bose, Indian quisling, was announced by Tokio on January 21.

It is a convenient death, from the Japanese viewpoint. Bose had out lived his usefulness and the Indian revolution he promised to arrange for the benefit of his Nipponese masters had failed to materialise. Recent Japanese defeats have made their plan for the domination of India look ridiculous.

Bose took his law degree at Cam bridge; but returned to India with an inferiority complex and a deep hatred of the English. He imme diately threw himself into political and revolutionary activities. He joined Ghandi as one of his most violent lieutenants. During one of Ghandi’s periodical “retirements” in 1937 and 1938, Bose was President of Congress, but in 1938 Ghandi and Bose split over the Indian Federation Bill.

When Bose showed that his method

of revolt was not passive, according to Ghandi doctrine, but flagrantly active, he was expelled from the again Ghandi-controlled Congress.

He began to play ball with German and Japanese agents, and when war came he got out of India one jump ahead of the law He was associated

Ali in 1941, but escaped through Tur key to Germany when Britain quickly regained control of the situation.

When Japan entered the war, Bose went to Tokio and later became Indian puppet ruler-in-exile, with headquarters in Singapore. It was believed that he kept in communica tion with his followers in India by submarine. At one stage he himself was taken to Burma by a Jap sub. in order to be conveniently placed when Jap armies entered India, and the Indians arose to greet their deliverers.

Japanese dreams of Indian con quests have now faded; Bose’s pro mised revolution came to nothing; and Bose, like so many of Japan’s ser vants, having failed in his task, has most opportunely joined his ancestors.

The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. Peter Fraser, and his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Mr. A. G. Osborne, re cently visited Suva en route to New Zea land Pacific Territories. Besides visiting New Zealand troops in the Colony, Mr.

Fraser went to the Central Leper Hos pital at Makogai and also had a number of informal discussions with various people on topics connected with adminis tration of Pacific Islands Territories.

The death occurred in Suva, on Janu ary 10, of Mr. Henry Weston, an old resi dent of Fiji. For years Mr. Weston worked on the Suva wharf as an over seer of stevedoring gangs, and his death w%s the result of a fall into the hold of a ship. He is survived by his wife and a son.

Bose.